You can call me ‘slick;' and you can call me ‘sick;' but never call me ‘Dick' .... as in Nixon, that is

WASHINGTON -- You can call Bill Clinton many things, and he won't lose his temper.
You can call him a liar, a cheat and a womanizer, and he will just smile. You can call
him Slick Willie, and he will just laugh.

But don't call him Richard Nixon.

Clinton came of political age during the Watergate scandal, and he considers Richard
Nixon the embodiment of evil.

Which is why Clinton grew so angry and so embarrassed recently when people started
comparing what he is doing in 1998 to what Nixon was doing in 1974.

Both presidents have invoked executive privilege in order to keep information from
investigators.

In 1974, Richard Nixon invoked executive privilege to keep from turning over his secret
White House tapes. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against him, he was forced
to give up the tapes, and he eventually resigned his office in disgrace.

For weeks now, Bill Clinton has invoked executive privilege to keep two close aides,
Bruce Lindsey and Sidney Blumenthal, from testifying before Ken Starr's sex and
cover-up grand jury.

But Monday, with the Nixon comparisons appearing daily in the media, Clinton gave up:
In an attempt both to protect his public image and to avoid a constitutional showdown,
he dropped his executive privilege claim.

Clinton intends to fight on, however, with his contention that lawyer-client privilege
should protect Lindsey, one of his closest White House confidants, from testifying.

Both Lindsey, a deputy White House counsel, and Blumenthal, a communications aide,
have testified before the grand jury in the past, but both have refused to answer some
questions based on attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.

In an effort to resolve the matter quickly, Starr took the rare step of asking the
Supreme Court to settle the dispute, thereby bypassing the Federal Court of Appeals.

"The sooner we can get issues resolved, the better," Starr told reporters outside his
house early Monday. "We want to move forward as quickly as we can and gather as
much information as we can."

The White House now says that because it is dropping the claim of executive privilege,
the Supreme Court need not consider the matter, thereby avoiding what could be an
embarrassing constitutional battle. The president's lawyers also said, however, that the
appeals court, and not the Supreme Court, should take up the matter of lawyer-client
privilege.

White House political operatives have long been nervous about Clinton's executive
privilege claim, believing that it too closely echoed Nixon's claim.

The White House legal team has argued from the beginning of the Lewinsky
controversy, however, that Clinton's public image is less important than protecting him
from possible indictment or impeachment.

The legal team has won most of the battles within the White House, including strict
instructions that Clinton should say nothing more publicly on the Lewinsky matter. But in
meeting with his lawyers Monday morning, Clinton sided with his political advisers.

Both his political and legal teams feel that the public will be much more sympathetic to
the claim of lawyer-client privilege.

"Most folks expect what they say to their lawyers is confidential," said counsel to the
president Charles F.C. Ruff in a rare briefing of reporters Monday afternoon. "That's
absolute."

White House aides also claimed Monday that while U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway
Johnson last week rejected Clinton's attempt to keep Blumenthal and Lindsey from
testifying based on executive privilege, she also ruled that executive privilege does exist
for many discussions the president has with his aides, even those that deal with his
personal misconduct.

"(T)he president does need to address personal matters in the context of official
decisions," Johnson ruled.

The judge ultimately rejected Clinton's claims of executive privilege, however, after
Starr made a private "substantial factual showing" to her that is being kept under seal
which demonstrated a "specific need" for the testimony of Lindsey and Blumenthal and
also demonstrated that he could not obtain such evidence elsewhere.

In so doing, Johnson upheld the principle of executive privilege, while saying it was
limited and not absolute.

Monday, White House aides gamely claimed that as a victory.

"On executive privilege, we won on principle," Deputy White House press secretary Joe
Lockhart said. "What would we appeal here? We are satisfied. We have protected the
institution of the presidency."

When it comes to lawyer-client privilege, however, the White House intends to fight on.
Even though Lindsey, who has been at Clinton's right hand since his Arkansas days,
has the title of deputy White House counsel, he does a multitude of undescribed and
unpublicized jobs for the president.

"Our basic core position," Ruff said, "is these conversations (with Lindsey), as long as
they deal with the official business of the presidency, are protected."

But I asked Ruff why discussions about Monica Lewinsky would be "the official
business of the presidency."

After all, talk about sex and gifts and jobs doesn't seem to have much to do with
Clinton's oath of office.

But Ruff wouldn't answer me, saying instead: "I think our position on that issue is laid
out exquisitely in our pleadings, and I will leave it there."

So I took a look at his pleadings. And in his memorandum to the district court filed
March 17, Ruff claims that conversations about Lewinsky are official for three reasons:

1. Because the Constitution requires the president to make a State of the Union speech
each year and the Lewinsky matter might have come up in that speech, those
conversations are official business.

2. Because the Lewinsky matter might have affected Clinton's role as a "peacemaker"
with foreign governments, those conversations are official business.

3. Because the Lewinsky matter could lead to Clinton's impeachment, Ruff argued,
those conversations are official business.

Impeachment? The president's own lawyer is uttering the dreaded I-word?

Next thing you know, Ruff is going to have Clinton go on TV and say, "I am not a
crook."

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